Emotions and foreign policy : an autoethnographic study of representational techniques at Japanese war museums

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Master’s Thesis 2019 60 ECTS

Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric)

Emotions and foreign policy:

An Autoethnographic Study of Representational Techniques at Japanese War Museums

Vemund Sveen Finstad

International Relations

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The Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Noragric, is the international gateway for the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). Eight departments, associated research institutions and the Norwegian College of Veterinary Medicine in Oslo. Established in 1986, Noragric’s contribution to international development lies in the interface between research, education (Bachelor, Master and PhD programmes) and assignments.

The Noragric Master theses are the final theses submitted by students in order to fulfil the requirements under the Noragric Master programme “International Environmental Studies”,

“International Development Studies” and “International Relations”.

The findings in this thesis do not necessarily reflect the views of Noragric. Extracts from this publication may only be reproduced after prior consultation with the author and on condition that the source is indicated. For rights of reproduction or translation contact Noragric.

Noragric

Department of International Environment and Development Studies P.O. Box 5003

N-1432 Ås Norway

Tel.: +47 67 23 00 00

Internet: https://www.nmbu.no/om/fakulteter/samvit/institutter/noragric

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Declaration

I, Vemund Sveen Finstad, declare that this thesis is a result of my research investigations and findings. Sources of information other than my own have been acknowledged and a reference list has been appended. This work has not been previously submitted to any other university for award of any type of academic degree.

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Acknowledgements:

Throughout the process of researching and writing this thesis, spanning more than a year, I’ve been able to find an approach to International Relations which resonates with who I am and what I think is important. The emotions-approach in this thesis has filled a void I thought was missing from other theoretical approaches in IR; it highlighted the individual; the emotional and affective aspect of domestic and international politics and it spoke up against power. It allowed me to rediscover the malleability of social reality by breaking the chains of fear from trauma and venture anew into life filled with pride, optimism and vigour. Rather than being drawn into the metaphorical light onto which mainstream IR-theories shine, I chose my own path. By focusing on war museums, emotions and affect this thesis allowed me to work to understand the social mechanisms which redirects the power of emotions, highlighting some of the normative roots from which contemporary institutions and events rise. For that, this thesis represents a personal achievement.

I would like to thank my supervisors Kirsti Stuvøy and Katharina Glaab for challenging me and providing invaluable feedback throughout this process, as well as NMBU and the Fritt Ord Foundation for financial support in relations to my fieldwork in Japan.

I would also like to thank Karianne, who’s patience and encouragement has been invaluable, giving me confidence to push on at times when the task at hand felt too big to complete. I would also like to thank my family, for believing in me and always being there for me.

I dedicate this thesis to the memory of my father.

Vemund Sveen Finstad Oslo, June 7, 2019.

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Abstract:

To this day, the alleged ‘history problem’; the perception from other countries, mainly Asian neighbours, that Japan has not come to terms with its aggressive and militarist past, continues to weigh on the Land of the Rising Sun and shape its room for manoeuvre in foreign policy.

Through an autoethnographic study of three Japanese war museums, this thesis argues for the importance of understanding the emotional roots of behaviour shaping both research in the field of International Relations, and developments in the international sphere.

This study provides readers with a view into a deeply personal journey to three war museums in Japan, where such sites come to be understood as highly political and arguably influential in shaping the normative space within which legitimate foreign policy can be enacted.

Through the emotional and affective sensibilities of the researcher, shaped by lived experience, this thesis presents an alternative to mainstream foreign policy analysis, as it highlights a bottom up approach exemplified by the analysis of Japans history problem.

The thesis argues theoretically for understanding the foundational role of emotions in policy formulation through its role in the social construction of rationality and legitimacy. It

concludes that although there are political reasons internationally for why the history problem persists, the main cause of its continuous relevance is based on the maintenance of post-war emotions domestically in Japan.

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In a public display of emotions, an alleged 120 000 protesters gathered in Tokyo on a rainy Sunday in August 2015. Near Japan’s parliament building, the Diet, they voiced their mistrust in the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and demonstrated their disapproval of Japans security policy shift (Takenaka, 2015). The protest, just one of many that weekend in Japan, was triggered by legislation which, in principle, allowed the Japanese military to be deployed overseas for the first time since the end of World War Two (Ibid.). This shift, which had been an aim for Japan’s main conservative leaders over the preceding decades

(Tønnesson, 2017), signalled the end of Japan’s long-time status as a pacifist country. It included a reinterpretation of the ‘pacifist clause’, Article 9 in the constitution, imposed on Japan by the US after the second world war (AFP, 2015). It had also been preceded by a period of reinterpretation of the history of Japans highly controversial militarist period (Tønnesson, 2017), a time which many believe Japan has still not reconciled with. The

memory of the last time Japan was a military power, subjugating much of East Asia under the weight of the long since vanquished empire, was again being called into the present. Why this history was recalled, is a good question.

Today, Japan is operating within a much-changed security policy environment. The distribution of power in East- and Southeast Asia is vastly different today, then at the time when Japan were able to conquer or annex much of the region. Firstly, the panoply of the United States covers much of the region, including Japan, something that makes it impossible for Japan to independently pursue foreign policy goals militarily, even if it wanted to.

Secondly, if Japan was remilitarizing to do the bidding of the United States, acting as America’s ‘Britain in the East’ (Ikenberry, 2006), the powerful rise of China would act as a counterweight prohibiting significant shifts in distributions of power in favour of Japan. Even so, Japan’s foreign policy ambitions are being exacerbated by the alleged history problem.

The history problem relates to the perception from other countries, mainly Asian neighbours, that Japan has not come to terms with its aggressive and militarist past (Dian, 2017,

Tønnesson, 2017). This perceived lack of reconciliation is argued to severely amplify the importance of Japans international disputes, including territorial ones with other regional powers (Dian, 2017). It is also argued to have limited Japans possibilities for presenting itself

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as a legitimate leading power in the East Asian regionalization process (Ikenberry, 2006, Dian, 2017).

It is within this social universe, where Japanese security policy is a source of active

contestation, that this thesis operates. It is devoted to an investigation of what it is that makes the history problem still relevant today. The standard causes for the history problem are Japans alleged unwillingness to acknowledge responsibility for atrocities committed by Imperial forces in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the impact of the Cold War, a period where authoritarian rule in Asian countries limited popular pressures and a lack of regional

institutions arguably delayed the reconciliation process (Berger, 2010). However, this thesis primarily focuses on the domestic causes of the history problem conundrum. More precisely, it has identified what is believed to be a source inside of Japan that maintains the history problem; namely war museums. To provide war museums with explanatory power requires a move away from the standard causes explaining the history problem, to credit more ‘fuzzy’

variables. More precisely, the thesis suggests to both theoretically and empirically highlight the role of emotions and affect as entry points to understanding the psychological foundations of contemporary Japanese foreign- and security policy. War museums have been identified as sites through which an approach focusing on the link between emotions and foreign policy can be operationalized, and they are relevant to foreign policy because they are not, contrary to common perceptions, politically neutral. For example, Audrey Reeves’ (2018) study of London’s Imperial War Museum argues that the IWM shape public opinion about national identity and the moral dilemmas of past wars in ways which involves the engineering of both affect and emotion. Debbie Lisle (2006, p. 852) highlights the prevalence of simple and unchallenging narratives at war museums, replacing the emotional ambivalence of real war with a «… morally driven narrative that must be learned, understood and accepted by passive and dutiful visitors». War museums re-present war, and as Roland Bleiker (2001, p. 515) argues, representation is always an act of power, which is at its peak if able to disguise its subjective origins and values.

This thesis is therefore an interpretivist study that attempts to come close to how it feels to fear in Japan. For that purpose, fieldwork was conducted at three Japanese war museums in January 2019, including the Yūshūkan Museum in Tokyo and the Atomic Bomb Museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Using autoethnographic techniques, this fieldwork highlights subjective experiences of emotions. With this approach the thesis engages in discussions about how to research emotions and the standards of scientific research such an approach

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requires. To explore Japan’s history problem the thesis draws on the affective turn in

international relations, including reflections on memory, aesthetics, emotions and affect that has emerged in IR scholarship over the last two decades (Reeves, 2018, Hutchison, 2016, Langenbacher, 2010, Sylvester, 2009, Ross, 2006, Callahan, 2004, Edkins, 2003, Bleiker, 2001). This thesis aims to contribute to this field with an empirical analysis based on

fieldwork into how emotions matter to Japan’s history problem and foreign policy. The thesis develops a framework for an autoethnographic fieldwork-based analysis and engages in discussions regarding the validity of approaching emotions as a scientific endeavour in this particular case, and in international relations more broadly.

1.1 Research question

As Article 9 in the Japanese constitution has been reinterpreted, it implicitly changes the role of Japan’s ‘self-defence’ forces. This thesis argues that Japan needs to confront affective and emotional dimensions domestically as a part of the policy shift. These developments require continuous work to legitimize a new collective understanding of the ambitions and necessities related to a rearmed Japan. This thesis argues that tackling the history problem requires changes domestically concerning the reproduction of memory at sites representing war history. Simultaneously, it requires working broad and long-term to expand the normative boundaries of positive affect in the general Japanese population. This issue is entangled with social and emotional dimensions that constitute trust and this thesis therefore addresses the reproduction of memory at sites representing war history in a comparative perspective across three war museums. It therefore asks: How do Japanese war museums reproduce memories of war and with what effects on the normative boundaries of foreign policy?

1.2 Structure of thesis

This thesis posits that emotions are a big part of what connects ordinary people to politics in representative democracies such as Japan. Following from this introduction, this thesis has four main parts and a conclusion. Chapter two introduces the affective turn in international relations and explain how the fieldwork on Japanese war museums is situated within this approach. The approach draws on post-positivist international relations perspectives to explore the relationship emotions shaped by experiences has with rationality and legitimacy, which in this thesis are argued to be socio-political constructs, also elaborated on in chapter two. Chapter three discusses methodology relevant for studying emotions in international relations before moving on to explaining the methods applied in this study. Chapter four

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presents and discusses findings made at the three field sites through an autoethnographic perspective, before chapter five takes the initial analysis one step further. This chapter argues how the war museums operate according to an instrumentalist notion of history, and that they can be seen as a unity that contribute to a normative field enabling Japan to base its

ontological security on a narrative of victimhood. From an epistemological point of view, this thesis argues throughout that research focusing on the aesthetic rather than mimetic qualities of sites can reveal what makes war museums efficient as sites shaping the normative space legitimate foreign policy can be enacted in. In addition, war museums are perceived as part of a field of actors with responsibility in signalling foreign policy intentions, expanding the realm foreign policy can be understood in from narrow state-centric conceptions.

2. Emotions, war museums and foreign policy

Right next to Hiroshima’s A-bomb Dome - the famous ruins of the pre-war industrial promotion hall - I come across a man dressed in a suit and tie. He is standing next to a monument and carries a shopping bag in his right hand, looking dejected, but still seemingly surveying the surroundings, as if waiting for someone. He pushes a button on the monument, and slowly walks away. A female voice starts speaking: In world war two, more than three million students over twelve years of age were mobilized for labour services throughout the country. As a result, more than 10.000 students were killed, including some 6000 killed by the atomic bomb. They gave up their youth and studies for the nation.

The tape-recording stops, and the man comes back. He pushes the button, the voice begins anew, and he walks away. The female voice starts speaking. When the voice stops, he repeats the process. Ten minutes pass, and he never lets the air go quiet. He doesn’t talk to anyone.

Neither does he work there. He just pushes the button. Then he walks away.

At 8:15am, August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb used against humankind exploded about 600 meters above Hiroshima. Almost the entire city centre was completely flattened. I was standing exactly at the spot where the bomb first hit, watching him, listening to her, and then a different man came up to me. «Where are you from», he asked slightly brazenly, measuring me up and down from behind thick, framed glasses. «Norway», I said calmly, «where are you from? ». I smiled. «Tokyo! », he answered quickly, before adding «Norway! », while pointing one finger upwards, «Ah… Northern Europe». I nodded, thinking he wished I was American.

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I think the same forces that weighed on me while in Japan, were the ones that weighed on those men. That day, the Hiroshima-sky was blue, without a cloud in sight. We could have been anywhere, done anything. Yet here we all were, searching for a way to be heard, as if to warn about something we had seen down the road. After all, the experiences we’ve had in our past do something to us. A traumatic event shapes the choices we make in our present and the paths we take in our lives, by altering the space and ways in which we think and feel we are able to move. At least, that’s how I think, and it informs the entire approach of this thesis.

This chapter explains the connection between the seemingly individual realm of emotions and foreign policy. The first part of the chapter is concerned with explaining the emotions

approach in this thesis, before arguing how emotions can be construed as part of the

constructivist ontology while simultaneously departing from it on an epistemological level.

The concept of trauma is central as the chapter moves on to explain how to ontologically operationalize war museums as the link connecting the seemingly individual phenomenon of emotions to foreign policy. Instead of focusing on material causes, this chapter builds a bottom-up theory for the purposes of this thesis that emphasizes a social ontology. In operationalizing war museums, the chapter argues how representations are crucial to the shaping political aims. Perceiving war museums through an emotions-lens, the thesis contends that such sites contribute towards not only the social construction of the nation state, but also acting as a determinant of political views on matters relating to state security through the engineering of emotion and affect.

If simply relying on the external senses for validating research, those traditionally related to mainstream international relations, the argument that war museums shape emotions and affect for political gains cannot be made. Thus, the chapter moves from war museums to argues that linking emotions, war museums and foreign policy require different epistemological

orientations. Thus, the chapter draws attention to the subjective nature of social reality

through a discussion on the concepts of legitimacy and rationality. The chapter then argues for an aesthetic mode of thinking which includes the sensory apparatus of the body in analysis, before introducing two analytical concepts, the poetics of space and emotional amplifiers.

These concepts describe mechanisms which arguably influence the relationship between subject and object during interpretation of sites.

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The so-called affective turn has opened new avenues of legitimate enquiry in the field of IR, and research on emotions has taken on qualities which establishes it as somewhat of a mainstream approach (Clément & Sangar, 2018). Many IR-scholars have been drawn to the neurosciences to bolster their argument that emotions matter (Crawford, 2014, Mercer, 2014, Jeffery, 2014), with neuroscientific research having established feelings as «… just as

cognitive as other percepts» (Damasio, 2006, p. 26-30), not separate from the reasoning process, but integral in assisting to it (Jeffery, 2014). The idea that reason and emotion existed in a dichotomous relationship has been the basis for positivist notions of objectivity and research ideals related to social science since the 18^th century Enlightenment. This dichotomy is also prevalent in most theories of international politics (Jeffery, 2014), historically in the grip of positivism and behaviouralism (Hoggett & Thompson, 2012). However, findings in neuroscience not only validates emotions, they also suggest that brain structures affect social behaviour and social behaviour affect brain structure (Holmes, 2014). This relationship of co- constitutive learning between structure and agency within the brain, called neuroplasticity, highlights the connection between biological and social phenomena (Damasio, 2006), in a way which effectively enables change as the only constant and emotions as a crucial

component in effectuating it. This ‘post-enlightenment’ argument implicitly grants legitimacy to theories arguing for conceptualizing ‘the now’ of any perceived social reality as a product of shared ideas (Wendt, 1999) which are subjectively meaningful (Bevir & Kedar, 2008) and shaped by historical and cultural forces (Reus-Smit, 2003). Simultaneously, it hints to the potential for transformation and emancipation inherent in self-reflexive processes that interrogate normative roots.

Emotions can thus not simply be dismissed as aberrations and deviations from a rationalistic norm (Ringmar, 2018). However, the everyday utility of emotions is arguably still poorly understood as they are frequently suppressed into action in accordance with what cultures have defined as the acceptable thresholds regarding its displays. Guiding individuals towards already established groups and interests working in conjunction with emotionally based principles, emotions are part of what shapes an outlook on politics. As such, emotions could be argued to form an important part of the link between norms and practice (See: Adler &

Pouliot, 2014). According to Ross (2014) emotions are integral to the way people inhabit cultural and political communities. They are not ‘pre-discursive’ but fashioned by

intersubjective frames which constitutes social reality (Butler, 2010). However, emotions

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produce specific psychological processes and experiences (Kitayama, Karasawa & Mesquita, 2004). Thus, emotions are argued to go with identity (Fukuyama, 2018, Mercer, 2014). While emotions are certainly present at the individual level, thus relevant to the study of world leaders for instance (van Hoef, 2018), emotions are argued to also influence group dynamics (Delori, 2018, Mercer, 2014), shaping the motives and behaviours of states (Wolf, 2018, Heller, 2018, Hutchison, 2016), and even abstracted to the level of geopolitical influence (Moïsi, 2009). IR-scholars argue convincingly for incorporating research on emotions into considerations around norms and values (Ross, 2006, Hutchison, 2016, Koschut, 2017), but as of yet IR does not have a unified theory on emotions on which this thesis can lean on. Thus, this thesis takes as its starting point constructivism and argues for the presence of emotions in relations to normative boundaries, in this case boundaries which arguably apply to Japanese foreign policy. As argued by Ross (2006) it seems only a small step from the understanding of the importance of identity and norms to the idea that emotions matter as something which mediates the receptivity of individuals to such phenomena. Focusing on emotions entails following constructivism in conceptualizing social order as inherently dynamic and open- ended (Ashley, 1981). However, an emotions-framework has an implicit emancipatory potential in that it opens for the possibility of agents altering structures, given that there are suitable structural conditions for normative change. Acknowledging the fluid potential of social and political relations implies accepting (hopefully civilized) conflict as an ineradicable aspect of social reality.

A theory on emotions follows the bottom-up approach of constructivism which places individuals as its main units of analysis, seen within this camp as situated in a context of normative meaning which shapes who they are and the possibilities available to them (Fierke, 2016). Subjects are thus perceived as guided by what their identity is and the norms that apply to them, i.e. their behaviour is guided by a logic of appropriateness. Thus, what is considered rational becomes a function of what is legitimate (Fierke, 2016), conceptualizing the social world as relational. The result is a worldview which understands norms and rules as effective through the socializing of individuals and their subsequent desire to «do the right thing»

(Risse, 2000, p. 4). Thus, through putting emphasis on the norms, rules and identity shaping and guiding the individuals that together make up society, constructivism provides a crucial first step in IR to argue the importance of emotions. Constructivists also highlighted the path- dependent character of international change by putting emphasis on «…how agents and structures are involved in a process of mutual creation and reproduction; how actors’

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interaction is constrained and shaped by that structure; and how their very interaction serves to either reproduce or transform that structure». (Barnett, 2003, p. 101). By calling for greater ontological awareness of the relationship between agency and structure, constructivists highlighted how the actions of subjects both constitutes the social world and is being

constituted by it. At the epistemological level they were arguing in favour of the multi-causal character of outcomes and the social world as an open system of equifinality (ibid). With such a tolerance for a multiplicity of outcomes and ways to get there, why isn’t emotions a key part of constructivist ontology?

Firstly, constructivism can be conceptualized as a structural theory as it highlights ideas, norms and values; ideational structures that are intersubjective and thus given a structural quality with the capacity constrain agents and action (Reus-Smit, 2003). Thus, while it opens for agency, it does not ascribe primacy to it over structure, and it does not explain how norms and rules are effective after they have been identified as influential mechanisms, beyond their structural properties. Secondly, constructivism attached itself to the positivist research agenda by assuming that cognition is «a property of intentional actors that generate motivational and behavioural dispositions» (Wendt, 1999, p. 224). This view has been criticized by Simon Koschut (2018, p. 321) who argues that «cognition that lack emotional input fails to produce a sense of obligation or loyalty necessary for collective identification». Koschut (2018)

suggests, albeit on a purely theoretical level, that emotions form part of the sociocultural structure by which agents choose meaning frames and interpretations, which help align and sustain their cognitive perceptions and moral attitudes. Following the insights from

neuroscience, it would be safe to follow Koschut in the assumption that emotions play a part in all interpretive processes. However, as Reus-Smit (2003, p. 132) notes; «historically and culturally contingent beliefs define how actors understand themselves, and who they think they are not only affects their interests but also the means they entertain to realise those interests». As such, emotions, which are widely perceived as elusive and unreliable, are yet to be accepted into the constructivist camp, despite the external validity granted by

neuroscience.

However, seen from a constructivist point of view, bolstered by neuroscientific insights, emotions must be considered crucial for explaining behaviour. As Jackson (2005, p. xii) argue, «most human action is less a product of intellectual deliberation and conscious choice than a matter of continual, intuitive, and opportunistic changes of course – a ‘cybernetic’

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switching between alternatives that promise satisfactory solutions to the ever-changing situation at hand». In these continuous, often subconscious, changes of social and political course that shape communities, emotions are at the core (Hutchison, 2016). Simultaneously, emotions are largely unseen or inaudible because they are hidden through institutionalization,

«embodied in the cultures of occupations and corporations» (Hoggett & Thompson, 2012, p.

2). However, after a trauma does emotions often becomes something which take the

foreground of conscious awareness. Human beings have an inherent need for understanding the meaning of things, especially after a trauma (Hutchison, 2016). It thus usually takes a catastrophic event, a trauma which rips apart and destroys the cohesion of time and identity (Edkins, 2006), to start a process of renegotiating the routines and beliefs of everyday life. In such situations, it becomes evident that emotions matter. Most states, which consists of groups of human beings, rise from a trauma, from real or imagined physical or psychological ruins, and «from the fragments of the ruins, the humiliation, we can reconstruct the lost

totality, not just in poetry or visual culture, but in national salvation» (Callahan, 2004, p. 209).

Indeed, the construction of national history is a central aspect to any effort at nation building (Berger, 2010), and by becoming socialized to national history, the narrative that defines what one is, nationality becomes a cultural artefact that command profound emotional legitimacy (Anderson, 1991). Legitimacy, the passive or active consent to a ruling body or set of policies (Hoskins & O’Loughlin, 2010), communicates shared emotional understandings that can weld together a community, at least temporarily. Thus, a state can be conceptualized as a

community of affect, highlighting how emotions are crucial to shaping the political and social by proliferating collective forms of meaning and feeling after trauma (Hutchison, 2016).

A move to emotions from constructivism thus implies adopting a bottom-up approach as the main stream of political behaviour, highlighting agency, as all communities exist or are created as insulation against the heightened risk of trauma inherent in individuality.

Constructivists are also concerned with the role of agency by focusing on the role of practices in the production and reproduction of social structures (Reus-Smit, 2003). Forms of

community are themselves produced and reproduced through social practices (Edkins, 2003, p. 11), which carries with it «possibilities for transforming identities and renegotiating

political affiliations» (Hutchison, 2016, p. 136). However, although constructivism includes a bottom-up approach to social order, it must be incomplete as it leaves out the importance of physiological and psychological systems for the human condition (Neumann, 2014). As Ross (2006, p. 198) points out; «constructivism contains as of yet no account of how norms,

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identities and other intellectual phenomena are sustained by deeper ranges of human expression». Thus, in order to understand human action, this thesis considers the social, as constructivism does, but also the psychological (emotions) and the physiological (affect).

Rather than simply focusing on cognitive systems, this thesis follows research that argues for how the body matters to IR, because mind and body are inextricably linked in relations to emotion and affect (source). What follows from taking emotions seriously is thus, contrary to constructivist epistemology, a post-positivist argument regarding the nature of social

relations, including social science, which transcends the Cartesian mind/body dichotomy on which traditional IR-theories are built. This dichotomy, separating mind and body, rationality and emotion, does not hold if one accepts, as Neta Crawford (2014) has argued, that fear changes what people look for, what they see, and the way they think. Considering that democratic states for the most part have ended the practice of physically subjugating their own citizens, in the next section attention is drawn to how representations, such as war museums, are crucial to how modern states shape emotions and affect to serve political aims.

2.2 War museums as representations

War museums commonly position themselves as authorities as to how conflict is to be

remembered. According to Christine Sylvester (2009) museums enjoy special privilege in that they retain the power to guide, and to reassure people that what they see has been judged to be of quality. As David Carr (2001, p. 30) argues, the museum is an «…entity that emanates dense waves of power, value and authority. It is endowed with power by its treasures and by its control of knowledge and information». This dominant position has led Lisle (2006) to argue that war museums can be seen «… as places where mass audiences are instructed about, and inculcated into, the principal values and norms of their communities». As Carr (2001) alludes to by referring to ‘treasures’, it is mainly the physical dimension of war museums which separates them from other sources of information representing war. This physical dimension is crucial in the creation of what Lisle (2006) calls the sublime; the emotional combination of terror and awe, which she argues is what visitors experience when confronting physical objects used in war and images of war. Representations of human suffering, such as war museums, memorials and memorialization practices, proliferate meaning after trauma.

They are among the ways people confront the challenge of responding to trauma and the contending temporalities it invokes (Edkins, 2003, p. 57). Museums and memorials are well- known sites that re-present significant moments in a nation’s history and thus add to the

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circulation and reproduction of ideas about national identity (Reeves, 2018). As Jenny Edkins (2003, p. 11). argue; how we remember a war «can be very much influenced by dominant views, that is, by the state». If citizens link their identity to the national history that is represented at a war museum, they can come to adopt what Hutchison (2016, p. 4) calls a shared emotional understanding of tragedy, that is circulated and reproduced at war museums.

Although there are many diverse groups within a country, representations in museums and memorials structure, shape and alter modes of thinking and feeling through time (Wasinski, 2018) and are thus involved in «the engineering of both affect and emotion» (Reeves, 2018:

105). By professing the same message to all who visit war museums produce shared meanings which influence the social construction of legitimate security policy, in a process «whereby images and emotions become political» (Schlag, 2018, p. 216). This raises questions about what kinds of legitimacy war museums manufacture and maintain, based on institutional choices related to the promotion of some discourses over others and the representation of Self and Other. According to Sylvester (2009, p. 181) a discourse is an ensemble of knowledges that can become dominant in an area and shape subjectivities and behaviour without overt command or coercion. As argued by Ty Solomon (2014) it is through discursive

representations that affect and emotions can function as the force of bonding that connects subjects to their identities. Designed and built after the actual event it represent has passed, war museums seek to produce memory. They are unable to represent its content in line with the often-chaotic events as they happened but can represent the history in a way which has the potential to transform memory. Thus, the aim is «… to produce in visitors a new and different set of memories as the basis for a collective identity» (Sherman, 1995: 53).

However, war museums are unique in the sense that they do not only provide linguistic representations of discourse. They commonly exhibit artefacts, such as bayonets and swords which have been used in combat, machine-guns and tanks that once were operative and served their purpose; the torn remains of a captain’s uniform or the actual letter sent by a deceased front-line private to his mother back home. Artefacts continue to attract the public and allows people to relate emotionally to events and processes of the past. The display of artefacts can be «seen as a way of bringing back the sanctity of the lives lost» (Edkins, 2003, p. 153), and museums can thus take on a ‘heightened’ role of importance akin to religious sites, becoming places of pilgrimage. As put forward by Benedict Anderson (1991) nationalism did not exactly replace religion, but it arose as religions declined and provides alternative responses to questions about human existence. This thesis posits that a critical approach towards sites

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shaping fundamental beliefs is crucially important as it follows the sentiment made by Andrew Callahan (2004) that war museums are part of the field which informs the dynamic between nationalism and foreign policy. As war museums mediates the template between nationalism and foreign policy, they create national narratives with heightened importance because of their access to artefacts, which people refer to when making decisions related to the relationship between self and nation. Once intersubjectively shared templates of thought which remain unquestioned have been established, it implies that decisions can be made seemingly ‘instinctively’, or in affect. Affect is conceptualized as bodily forces augmenting or diminishing a body’s capacity to act (Clough, 2008), and it is argued to be crucial in decision- making. For example, Erik Ringmar (2018) argues that decisions are often not as rational as we would like to think, but rather a result of habits and instinctive reactions. He argues that when subjects analyse the world around them, they do so not from a position of being a tabula rasa but based on representations that are relevant to that situation. According to Ringmar (2018) it is in relations to this/these representation(s) that we react. Thus, when visiting war museums, the elements which constitutes a subject’s identity, a person’s lived experience, and which are relevant to juxtapose on a war museum, will contribute to shaping the outcome of the interaction between subject and object. This contrasts with traditional epistemological thought, which construes rationality in terms of a set of principles that reflect an objective reality (Mumby & Putnam, 1992). In short, it’s premised on a belief of rationality as something that is historically and culturally contingent. As Max Horkheimer (1972, p. 3) argued «perceived facts are co-determined by social-historical human conceptions (hence already implicitly rational!) before theoretical elaboration by the knowing subject».

Rationality is thus construed as a self-limiting form of ‘instrumental rationality’ (Neufeld, 1993). This means perceiving rationality not as a concept anchored in objective truth, but rationality as a social phenomenon, anchored in legitimacy. This ontology builds on the writings of Max Weber (1948), who argued that the state cannot be construed in simply materialist terms. As the statement goes a state’s successful functioning is based on claiming the monopoly of the legitimate (my highlighting) use of physical force within a given territory (Quoted in Reus-Smit, 2003), emphasising the fundamental importance of synchronization of the relationship of ideas between those who govern and the governed. As Reus-Smit (2003, p.

124) puts it, Weber’s stress on legitimacy is «… an invitation to explore the foundational role of ideas in undergirding the sovereign state», a world of ideas which, with regards to Japan’s security policy, war museums are argued to play an integral, socializing part. As combat objects become museum objects, the contexts they are made to act in changes the meanings

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associated with them. Thus, war museums do not simply contain value-neutral, dry history lessons (Reeves, 2018). Rather, they are perceived as subjective representations, becoming political institutions as they have the capacity to decisively shape opinion based on lessons from past wars and conflict on a large scale (Lisle, 2006). War museums used to be the main sites where mass audiences could come to learn about past conflicts and the lessons associated with them. Today however, national narratives that war museums present are increasingly being challenged by alternative interpretations, made possible through technological

innovations such as the internet and exchanges of peoples and ideas across borders, with one such example being this thesis. Thus, how we remember war is no longer determined by war museums alone, and the belief about meanings cannot be neatly delineated by national boundaries. This means that it is possible, to a perhaps greater extent than before, to stand

‘outside the self’ to interrogate the subjective role of national narratives presented at war museums, which means their political influence can be contested, challenged and even changed.

2.3 Aesthetics and war museums

This thesis takes a critical approach to the analysis of post-war narratives presented in war museums in Japan, but crucially, it does so through a method that highlights the subjectivity associated with aesthetic interpretation. War museums are argued in this thesis to disguise their role as political actors through the apparent showcasing of mimetic, i.e. objective, representations. By purportedly offering objective reconstructions of events, frequently in an authoritative manner, war museums hide their situated biases and position, which is not one of mimetic reconstruction of events, but one of aesthetic representations of events. To represent refers to the process of re-presenting an original object present at time/place X to another time/place Y. In this process of ‘copying’, some things are lost while others are gained (Hoskins & O’Loughlin, 2010). The crucial, poststructuralist point, is that artefacts are representations that do not have objective qualities in themselves but are continuously subject to interpretation (Campbell & Bleiker, 2013), i.e. they are given meaning by the subject interacting with them. Within this post-positivist reality, everything is perceived as a representation. Aesthetic insight does not advocate the existence of direct causal links between representations and political attitudes. The point is neither to be critical towards all representations. Rather, opening the field of IR up for aesthetic insight encourage critical analysis of social phenomena, allowing a re-discovery of the malleability of social life, to understand the aesthetic, not only the mimetic, qualities of representations. Such perceptions

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open the space within which we think and feel we are able to move through challenging and overcoming fear as we step into the unknown, unmasking seemingly material objects as the social phenomena they are, in the realization that it is human beings who infuses objects with meaning. This makes it easier to reevaluate whether representations serve a purpose in the shaping of legitimacy and rational thought that addresses the needs of the present and future.

It enables actors to take a more proactive role in encouraging more inclusive forms of life and policies. This thesis follows Max Horkheimers (1972, p. 9) argument that critical theory and critical practice such as this is desired for the purpose of producing «a conscious social subject» capable of challenging dominant discourses and practices. Crucially, challenging dominant discourses is important because it can inform solutions to problems. What is considered legitimate may not always be what is the most rational and challenging the status quo may be desirable as times and conditions change, as collective memory of the past, shaped by its past, can work to the detriment of the present. In the case of Japan this has become evident as the history problem persists as a basis upon which other states can react and draw negative attention to.

The change of perspective from mimetic reproductions to aesthetic representations thus opens for research on the relationship between war museums and emotions, as research on war museums seen through a positivist-lens can only say something about that social reality which is possible to validate by the senses. Collective remembrance is a key part of the building of any collective, and nation states are the social units exhibiting the most explicit forms of memorialization. However, the role and importance of such memorializing sites to culture and politics is often not appreciated, since their effects are not easily measurable using traditional positivist-inspired approaches to the study of international politics. Thus, in order to argue that war museums play a role in shaping a normative, emotional space in a world of ideas, it is necessary to be able to consciously experience this ‘emotional world’ and take it seriously, which leads one to adopt an aesthetic approach to social reality. Adopting an aesthetic

approach implies acknowledging that there is always a difference between the represented, X, and its representation, Y (Bleiker, 2001). Although Y is about X, it’s not X. The difference may seem small, but it is vastly significant. It implies that representations such as war museums (Y), can alter the experience of war itself (X) in the process of moving it through time and space. Thus, unless you’ve been there (in the war) and experienced it for yourself, you’ll get the ‘war museum experience’ of war. This calls into question the relationship between emotions and power. «Facing us at all times, power eludes us», argues Christine

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Sylvester (2009, p. 179). She draws an analogy between museums and the concept of collage, in that both to varying degrees mix things up and «launches objects out of assigned places and into spots we least expect them to be» (Sylvester, 2009, p. 21). In a collage however, it’s on the viewer, or interpreter, to make all the connections, theorize and reinterpret, but in a war museum, these choices are made for us. This altered experience of war is more than the sum of the material parts of X which can be externally validated. War museums frequently call the sensory attention of visitors to purportedly mimetic reconstructions of war, such as real-life artefacts, photographs and video-installations. By simultaneously not being open about their situatedness as institutions, offering aesthetic representations, war museums can disguise the subjective composition of exhibits. In this process, which furthers the politicizing of war and conflict, war museums are granted ‘special privilege’ (Sylvester, 2009) in the maintenance ideas, taking up an authoritative position on how to interpret the narratives of war that silences ambivalence (Lisle, 2006).

War museums are commonly interpreted based on the discourse they use, as written language has taken place as the principal medium through which representation and interpretation of security happen (Reeves, 2018). Language is central to this thesis too, as it follows the view put forward by Bruner (1991) that humans organize their experience and memory mainly in the form of narratives. However, war museums represent foundational narratives for the state and these narratives are thus, according to Lisle (2006), commonly structured in a way which does not offer possibilities for truly understanding the lessons of war. War museums do not offer precise renditions of past wars and conflicts through language that encompass the ambivalent nature of it. Instead, they frequently cloak realities in a language of victimisation, coupled with strategic forgetting and moral instruction, where «…difficult stories of trauma, violence and loss are neutralised and made amenable through comforting narratives of commemoration and education» (Lisle, 2006, p. 842-843). Reeves (2018, p. 105) has underscored that these narratives are made by and for cultural and economic elites, as she argues that they come together to «…build common narratives about the nation state’s engagement in past wars and its identity as a security actor within the broader world order».

When war museums appear to convey value-neutral and unbiased information it must be asked if they simultaneously construct a narrative which benefits something and someone.

Thus, the language at war museums tricks visitors. This reality is, however, frequently pushed to the background of intellectual awareness as we live in times shaped by scientific ideals juxtaposing absolute dichotomies such as truth/false, right/wrong, correct/incorrect, from their

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natural science-origins onto the subjective human realm. Indeed, as Bruner (1991, p. 4) has argued, most of the knowledge about human knowledge-getting and reality-construction is drawn from studies of how people come to know the natural or physical world. At war museums widely differentiated and multifaceted issues are linguistically simplified, streamlined and shaped, often to fit into a ‘grand narrative’ spanning temporal and spatial divides and sometimes establishing connections of spurious validity.

It is through its narrative structure that war museums enable these ‘qualities’, and the

narratives relate intimately to emotions in that something that was dangerous in the past is represented and brought into the present in a way that first creates feelings of fear and

uncertainty. Subsequently, visitors are offered an escape from the potential anxiety-inducing situation of re-presented war through a saviour-narrative, often casting the state in the role of hero, that seeks to replace chaos with meaning, created through what Neta Crawford (2014) called a language of justifications, beliefs and reasons. War museums can be argued to shape experiences which become taken for granted as such sites appear to convey value-neutral and unbiased information while simultaneously representing a ‘dead’, unobtrusive object, not instinctively being perceived as an attempt at influencing thought. However, rather than allowing for individual interpretation and meaning making of the emotional unease associated with exposure to death, trauma, and violence, a narrative on how to make sense of the chaos of war is introduced. War museums represent carefully selected facts organized into a narrative that is intended to legitimize some options while ‘seamlessly and insidiously’

neglecting/condemning others (Reeves, 2018, p. 104) This form of communication is not value-neutral or power-neutral. Like all language, it is social and political, and like Jenny Edkins (2003) argues, relations of power are produced through and reflected in it. Thus, from this perspective war museums are highly political sites. They invite critical analysis on the basis that they are influential as they attempt to shape a uniform narrative which legitimizes certain political options. They are sites which people are usually exposed to at a very young age, commonly sites for class excursions and the like, thus providing foundational narratives at moments in human beings lives where they are not capable of critically assessing the information they are fed.Such narratives may be highly problematic if they’re legitimizing and reinforcing inequalities between social groups or promoting overtly ethnocentric attitudes which encourages or deepens animosity and antipathy between people of different nations, at least seen from the perspective of this thesis, which is shaped by a humanist and cosmopolitan ontology. Cognitive biases are useful, because they are normative ordering structures.

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However, such ingrained, taken-for-granted beliefs can also limit the access to potentially better, more rational solutions to new challenges as they are also inflexible and likely to be a basis for negative emotions when challenged.

2.4 War museums and the body

As argued earlier in this chapter, the power of war museums cannot be appreciated without also incorporating into analysis the material artefacts which draw the eye and kindle the imagination in a way which changes their original function and meanings. Thus, for the purposes of this thesis, which is analysing the political function of museal content, beyond describing its material qualities, it is necessary to go beyond language, and thus beyond cognition, to incorporate the emotions, and thus the body. Museums and memorials are unique mediums in the sense that they allow visitors to physically move throughout the narrative. They arguably simultaneously retain their power to influence from the common misconception that movement is free; that use of the physical body around real objects of war or within areas of previous warfare does not matter or have consequences for the perceptions and interpretations made by visitors. By allowing for multiple visitors simultaneously, museums can also be argued to create a social field with its own code of conduct and

behavioural expectations. This phenomenon can be tied up to the concept of governmentality, defined by Stuart Hall (1999, p. 14) as «how the state indirectly and at a distance induces and solicits appropriate attitudes and forms of conduct from its citizens». Tony Bennett (1995) has argued that the museum should be understood as an institution that was designed not only to

‘improve’ the populace, but to encourage citizens to regulate and police themselves (Quoted by Reus-Smit, 2003). Thus, from a social perspective, war museums can function to routinize some types of behaviour, creating practices, which is interconnected to forms of bodily and mental activities (Reckwitz, 2002a). War museums become like a training ground, not just for informing the mind, but for altering the movement of bodies in conjunction to security issues, disseminating subliminal, embodied ways of knowing. This thesis holds that the impact of war museums cannot be fully appreciated without also incorporating an awareness of the physical interplay war museums allow for in the analysis. This awareness needs to emphasize knowledge as a collective, as action, «working with a performative understanding of the world (Bueger & Gadinger, 2015, p. 449-450). Such an ontology even transcends cultural boundaries as it associates behaviour with deeper human faculties associated with emotions and affect, connecting with distant others through the commonality of vulnerable bodies (Butler, 2004). It means that war museums are constructed in a way which throughout the

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narrative attempts to create a balance, where visitors are brought physically close to war through the display of carefully selected real-world items and harrowing accounts of brutality.

Simultaneously, the emotions of uncertainty, fear and sorrow that may be generated by this physical proximity are not left to their own devices. War museums enable visitors to feel and imagine what it, whatever is on display, must have been like, but does not allow for the visitor him/herself to navigate their way out of those emotions. Rather, war museums commonly neutralise difficult stories of trauma, violence and loss and instead create «victorious accounts of war to evacuate, displace and silence ambivalence». (Lisle, 2006 p. 843). When

approaching the study of war museums, it is thus important to keep in mind that they employ narrative techniques that trick visitors to adopt political perspectives. However, by adopting an aesthetic mode of appraisal which incorporates the body in analysis it may be possible to go beyond ontology, to connect to more fundamental faculties associated with affect and emotions. Thus, it may be possible to reach a different level of understanding and a more complete picture of the historically and culturally contingent practices that shape what is considered legitimate and rational in different societies.

This thesis aims to triangulate findings of normativity inherent in language with

interpretations regarding normativity inherent also in material objects. Theory triangulation involves using several different perspectives in the analysis of the same set of data (Denzin, 2017). The reason for this is because although interpretive IR-analyses can be conducted according to just one source of theory, the saliency of the emotions-argument is thought to increase by making explicit several ways of conceptualizing the emotional and affective potential of such sites. These additional theoretical perspectives are highlighted by drawing attention to the materiality of war museums. As established, it is the physical aspect of such sites which principally set them apart from other representations of history and security. Thus, in addition to how the narrative is organized from a language-perspective within the museal space, the poetics of space (PoS), a concept developed by French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard (1958), highlights issues related to architecture and design of public spaces. Rather than seeing the interpretation of narratives within war museums as something which happens in isolation from its surroundings, the concept of PoS adds to the phenomenology of the imagination, which is inherent in narrative analysis (source), the architectural space that is the museum. The argument for adding this is that an analytic focus on architecture and the

meaning of spaces can reveal important “side-narratives”, negotiated through the affective sensibilities of the self. Architecture can add legitimacy to the main linguistic narratives,

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conveyed through the written or visual representations of war inside the museums. The poetics of space can also refer to the material insides of war museums, as a process producing meaning through the internal ordering and conjugation of the separate but related components of an exhibition (Lidchi, 1997). This again refers to how museums «…employs certain

representational strategies to claim authenticity and mimic reality» (Mason, 2011, p. 20), or strategies for promoting authority and status. Bachelard’s concept of PoS is intimately linked to the emotions through the notion of the reverie. Reverie is a state of creative daydream in which subject and object becomes intimately intertwined in such a way that «object is

intimately bound up with the subject in the generation of meaning» (Picart, 1997, p. 60). War museums, as other types of museums, frequently inhabit lavish spaces which are pleasing from an aesthetic viewpoint, often particularly in terms of facades and surrounding public areas. The aesthetic element, which PoS highlights, induces feelings of well-being which could be argued to magnify the effect of representations, signalling as it does status, power and legitimacy. Aesthetic well-being promotes reverie-inducing situations, creating an

emotional attachment between subject and object which arguably reduces capacity for critical analysis. (Similar to how churches, mosques etc. function) However, the PoS is simply a conceptual tool for highlighting material elements. The meanings that are inserted into the gap between visual objectification of presumably interconnected material elements and the

concept of PoS is a subjective representation which may or may not resonate with the ideas of other social subjects about what matters in the process of interpretation. E.g. it is easy to imagine that for many Japanese, a ‘side-narrative’ consisting of architectural splendour for the purposes of achieving status, power and legitimacy, will not be as problematic, because it highlights narratives which are supposedly there for the protection of them. Thus,

acknowledging the presence of emotions in cognitive appraisals of objects calls into question the possibility to even separate between subject and object. After all, the value-distinctions we give to objects are inextricably interlinked with our own lived experience, and does not

represent an objective, pre-social conceptualization of the object of analysis. As Elizabeth Dauphinee (2010) has pointed out, the separation of subject and object rests not on truth, as objects cannot be independently verified. Rather, human conceptualizations of objects are intersubjectively shared representations, whose position of authority rests on their ability to generate trust towards a certain shared interpretation of them. If that trust is hurt, people will instinctively start to look elsewhere for something to hold on to.

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This section provided justification for the next chapter delineating the methodology and methods applied in this thesis. Thus, the thesis now turns to explain why an autoethnographic method is required to study how war museums influence emotions and affect.

3. Methodological considerations on emotions-research

As argued in the introduction, several scholars point to how Japanese foreign policy is partly constituted by emotions (Tønnesson, 2017, Dian, 2018). This chapter is thus devoted to explaining the methodology and choice of method that has been used in this thesis to understand how war museums shape emotions on a collective level. This thesis uses autoethnography to study Japanese war museums. The approach was selected in order to facilitate a discussion on affect and emotions and their relationship with foreign policy and international relations. Thus, the first section of this chapter explains what autoethnography is, before initiating a methodological discussion by contrasting the approach with traditional ethnographic research. The chapter then moves on to discuss the ethical aspects related to studying emotions and affect in a foreign country using the autoethnographic method, before moving on to discuss the validity of this approach and the criteria for evaluating it. The chapter then explains the practical steps that were taken to collect data using the

autoethnographic method, arguing that it by highlighting aesthetic insights produce its own sources and simultaneously enable arguments that cannot be made using other methods.

According to Clément & Sangar (2018) publications looking into what role affect and

emotions play in decision-making and politics have been on constant rise in the past ten years.

However, the ambition to research emotions using autoethnography clashes with the dominant modes of research and writing in IR, which still comes with the presumption that the writer must be absent from his or her own work for it to be considered legitimate (Doty, 2010).

Thus, the second section of this chapter, which delineates the practical methods that were used during fieldwork on this thesis, also reflects the emotional need to legitimize the

approach. The autoethnographic method was selected for the purpose of being able to access emotions and argue for the importance of foregrounding lived experience as something which influences any process of interpretation. In relations to the case in this thesis, such a move is also argued to be important from an ethical perspective, as ethnographic studies related to security policy in other countries risks misinterpretation if attributing findings to the sites rather than the researcher’s subjective interpretation of them.

3.1 An autoethnographic approach to war museums

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Autoethnography is strand of anthropology that is based on intentional self-reflexivity, allowing researchers to insert their personal and subjective interpretation into the research process (Chang, 2008). According to Oded Löwenheim (2010, p. 1029) the value of an autoethnographic account lies mainly «in its ability to break through the text’s linguistic barrier and evoke an emotional and reflective response on the part of readers, to make them interested in the story and think about their own condition and position». As such, findings do not reflect a traditional authoritative account of what is, but rather represents a subjective

‘bottom-up’ form of research. Highlighted in this process is the very act of discovery, when the ontology of the researcher meets with the ontology which has shaped the museal

exhibitions. It is a process where deliberations and discussions encourage learning of ‘the Other’ through self-reflexive analysis of ‘the Self’, where acknowledging the situatedness of subjects replace the passive submission to purportedly objective ‘facts’, and where subject and object are intimately connected. This ontology builds on Max Weber (1948), who stressed the importance of intersubjectively shared ideas, or legitimacy. The concept of legitimacy does not only serve as an invitation to explore the foundational role of ideas in undergirding the sovereign state (Reus-Smit, 2003). For such an ontology to be consistently applied, it is also an invitation to explore the foundational role of ideas undergirding the social scientist himself. Indeed, if politics is constituted by language, ideas and values, we cannot stand outside ourselves to make neutral judgements (Hill, 2016).

Autoethnography explicitly promotes the qualities related to subjectivity in interpretation as it stimulates introspection, creating a bridge for IR from the traditional realm of science as solely validated by the externally available senses into the sensorial and emotional. Here, individuals and groups are accepted as ontologically situated, meaning-making human beings, laden with sentiments and taste. The meaning of objects of research changes through time and space through diffusion of memory, and the process of research at all stages is one of

interpretation which is influenced by the historical and cultural context of the researcher.

Thus, this type of hermeneutic approach stresses the importance of understanding background conditions and cultures that constitute social reality and make actors and action meaningful (Lebow, 2008) while simultaneously calling for self-reflection, reflexivity in the research process (Reeves, 2018, Schwarz-Shea & Yanow, 2013, Chang, 2008). Focusing on the historical/cultural context implies that ontology takes the foreground (Jackson, 2008). The thesis takes a post-positivist approach to argue that the only thing we can know hope to know is found, as Jackson (2010) so eloquently puts it, by exploring the dynamic interplay between

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observer and the observed, and the co-presence of culturally specific and existentially universal elements within the same behavioural field.

Thus, this section argues that understanding is better attained through being open about the subjective ontology of the researcher, highlighting assumptions, prejudices and emotional dispositions which are at play in the process of interpretation. Such a discussion on methodology is deemed to be relevant as it forms the foundation for taking seriously the approach of autoethnography. Thus, research becomes not about revealing the «truth» about the selected sites or culture, but to convincingly argue how and why the research undertaken is worthwhile and that it creates understanding that should be taken seriously.

Autoethnography thus contrasts with traditional ethnography in that the latter advocates telling ‘realist tales’ (Van Maanen. 1988), or «apparently definitive, confident, and dispassionate third-person accounts of a culture and of the behaviour of members of that culture» (Bryman, 2016, p. 459). The ethnographic text «must provide an ‘authoritative’

account of the group or culture in question. In other words, the ethnographer must convince us that he or she has arrived at an account of social reality that has strong claims to truth» (ibid).

Autoethnography uses the lived experience of the author as a methodological resource and subjective interpretations as primary data. This implies, as Chang (2008) points out, that the stories of autoethnographers needs to be reflected upon, analysed, and interpreted within their broader sociocultural context. As Horkheimer (1972, p. 3) argues, «… the world given to each individual is a social product, as is perception as well». That is not to say that this thesis argues for conceiving everything social as a construction – there are biological basics as well – only that evidence shows that cultural practices produce specific psychological processes and experiences (Kitayama, Karasawa & Mesquita, 2004) that is beyond the scope of this thesis to become assimilated into.

Autoethnographers also attempt to achieve cultural understanding through analysis and interpretation, and like ethnographers, autoethnographers follow an ethnographic research process by systematically collecting data, or field texts, analysing and interpreting them, and producing scholarly reports (Chang, 2008). Thus, while autoethnographic findings does not make any claims to objective truth, it is nevertheless argued here that it provides important insights, as it highlights subjective memory. According to Confino (1997, p. 1388) the term

‘memory’ can be useful in articulating the connections between the cultural, the social, and the political, between representation and social experience. However, single-site and single theory research findings may be more a reflection of the situation the researcher found

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himself in during data collection, and the conscious or non-conscious desires of representation that existed at that time, rather than an actual account of the socially constructed processes that belongs to the field under study. It is only when linked to historical questions and problems, via methods and theories, that memory can be illuminating (Ibid). Thus, the

autoethnographic approach in this thesis relies heavily reflexivity to situate the researcher and allow critically assess the relationship between subject and object, and on theoretical

deliberations on emotions and affect anchored in constructivism, as delineated in chapter two, in order to validate its scientific merit.

As established then, the relational character of autoethnography sharply diverges from the authoritative notions of social reality which traditional ethnography arguably should produce.

Although postmodernism-inspired methods such as autoethnography have been criticized for an obsession with self-reflexivity (Salzman, 2002) autoethnography is not about focusing on the self alone and a priori not a personal investigation (Reeves, 2018). Rather, it is more usefully conceptualized as a «technique of social investigation conducted through the self»

(Wakeman, 2014, p. 708) or as about searching for understanding of others (culture/society) through self (Chang, 2008). Thus, as Duckart (2005) argues, the self is a subject to look into and a lens to look through in order to gain an understanding of the societal culture (Quoted by Chang, 2008, p. 49). Autoethnography stresses how knowledge created is relational, produced in a relationship between the writer and the reader (Reeves, 2018), and between observer and the observed. This strand of IR research shares with IR scholarship in general the fact that its use is motivated by lifestyles, interests and backgrounds that hone different sensitivities (ibid). In this case its use is motivated by a ‘philosophical ontological wager’ of the self being inextricably linked to any analysis of the world (Neumann, 2010). As interpretive, subjective approaches such as this is dependent on perception, with perception being a relative concept with subjective experiences, or memory, as basis, the approach requires reflexivity, as it is a product of a certain culture and a certain power/knowledge-background (Löwenheim, 2010).

Thus, the self is characterized through an introspective attitude which orients itself outwards by first filtering information through the self. Applying autoethnography onto questions of world politics allows this thesis to theorize upon an understanding of the importance of memory as a foundation upon which behaviour is filtered, as a ‘roadmap’, onto which new encounters are interpreted. As such, this approach is one way of many possible ways of seeing or feeling what’s relevant to the international. But it is not enough to pick a ‘vehicle of

memory’, analyse its representation and draw conclusions about ‘memory’ or ‘collective

Emotions and foreign policy : an autoethnographic study of representational techniques at Japanese war museums